'Stunning' percolation proof solves decades-old puzzle about phase transitions(quantamagazine.org) |
'Stunning' percolation proof solves decades-old puzzle about phase transitions(quantamagazine.org) |
So happy this didn’t end with, “tweaking their prompt for ChatGPT Sol” or whatever.
> He, Diskin, and Radhakrishnan made some progress and brought their results to Sudakov and Tassion. As Tassion took in their work, an idea — perhaps an outrageous one — formed in his mind. … Over those weeks, the collaboration became frenzied. The mathematicians traded ideas constantly, often texting late at night.
It will be a truly sad world if we automate this away.
>It will be a truly sad world if we automate this away.
In my opinion, research can't be fully automated because the space of possible problems is too large. You need humans to decide which problems are worth spending time on, and to evaluate which results are important. We might expect AI to automate some of the routine aspects like searching for counter-examples or formalizing proofs, but that will free up resources for humans to focus on the big ideas and the direction of research.
Why?
They are performing cognitive labor. Good for them I suppose but what is so romantic about this particular type to deserve these types of responses?
(often Romanticism) a movement in the arts and literature that originated in the late 18th century, emphasizing inspiration, subjectivity, and the primacy of the individual.
Literally, we're saying, "humans interacting with humans and being subjective is what brings joy and creativity to people."
That sounds pretty dead on to me. Automating it to a process is the exact opposite so.. I think you're asking the wrong question. If you're trying to ask "why would people want to do this" I don't have an answer for you that isn't a study in the humanities.
The irony is allowing machines to automate the economy will allow more people to have more enjoyable lives. For every nerd plugging away at something like this there are millions of ancestors who fought and died and clawed to do what for most humans for most of history was the only thing that qualified as labor - participating in brutish endeavors (hunting/farming/murdering) that barely sustained their short lives.
LLMs over the next century (probably in China given the retrograde impulses dominating both sides of the political aisle in the US) will likely assist (if not autonomously) solve cancer and other diseases, invent new alloys and forms for manufacturing, automate away all labor (including most if not all military service), travel farther into our universe than any human ever plausibly could, and other breakthroughs.
A huge concentration of the actual talent of our world is already enmeshed in this endeavor. The majority of the detractors aren't cut out to compete, so they cling to their "bullshit jobs"[1] instead of leveraging the democratic processes their ancestors bled for to simply convince enough of their fellow humans to engineer an equitable redistribution of gains. Why do so many people want to eliminate the only chance their kids will have to not have to work? Is it some desire to inflict our modern masochisms onto future generations? It's like watching these colonies of men sign up to get screamed at to prove they are masculine [2]. The West seems to have entered a state of mass delirium. It's the same thing. Pining for the past. One is even more distant - where the labor of raw strength mattered. Another is I guess pining for the more recent past where if you could write or manage powerpoint or excel effectively enough you could have the "American Dream."
Most of the people applauding this particular mathematical breakthrough are unlikely to be able to understand it. It's the same irony that has led man for centuries to use romanticism about human nature selectively. For most of history these conceptions were used to draw arbitrary lines around which homo sapiens were and were not worthy of basic dignity - who was citizen and who was slave. The same capacity for cognitive dissonance is alive and well in modern man.
Don't curse your children. If you don't like who owns LLMs in the United States, the democratic tools to nationalize or redistribute the gains are at your disposal. If you were to actually engage in this battle you will quickly learn the "enemy" is not the machines - it's what it has always been, your fellow man. The past is not coming back, and it was never that great to begin with. It was not so many generations ago that most children who were born died shortly thereafter, and more children were born in general because children were a source of labor to keep the household afloat.
Stop romanticizing labor.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs [2] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/04/06/the-camps-prom...
https://proofsandprompts.com/2026/08/30/care-for-a-little-mo...
“LLMs over the next century (probably in China given the retrograde impulses dominating both sides of the political aisle in the US) will likely assist (if not autonomously) solve cancer and other diseases, invent new alloys and forms for manufacturing, automate away all labor (including most if not all military service), travel farther into our universe than any human ever plausibly could, and other breakthroughs.”
Do you have a response to the threat of cognitive surrender and cognitive debt as a second order effect from heavy LLM use and how that could undermine humanity’s ability to steer these correlation engines toward your preferred hypothetical outcomes without AGI?
> Do you have a response to the threat of cognitive surrender and cognitive debt as a second order effect from heavy LLM use and how that could undermine humanity’s ability to steer these correlation engines toward your preferred hypothetical outcomes without AGI?
Yes, by way of analogy. Primordial man was more familiar with murder and the slaying of wild animals for sustenance. To lament this loss is to be something like those men I mentioned earlier, striving to be screamed at while shivering in the cold in some pantomime of ancient virtue.
The world is complicated. Humanity cannot continue to advance without finding a way to offload such complexity to technology. This has always been the way, and on balance, we are better off for it. The problems of the future are likely too complicated, along too many dimensions, for human cognition to solve alone. In many ways, humans have always known this. It's where the notion of God comes from.
I'm also not sure what sort of cognition will be needed to "steer". It's a good question. This is an interesting problem, but I think the way you frame it rests on a few faulty assumptions.
1. That humans, absent of LLMs, even "steer" their own societies. The average human has really no say in affairs of even the most liberal modern states, certainly not in its underpinnings. A lucky few get to frame the terms of constitutions or revolutions or polities. Most who are cited to have died in such efforts were not the ones to actually make the choices we still live with today. That power has always been the province of a privileged few. This is an inescapable side effect of complexity. In this way, LLMs are merely a continuum of historical trends, and as such, are largely unavoidable.
2. That humans will be the necessary or only interface to steer LLMs. It is far more likely some engineering around adversarial machines or consensus of other automation will have to "enforce" certain types of steering, irrespective of the wishes of any particular human agent. This is likely desirable, in the same way most modern states do not wish to be hijacked by executive fiat.
3. That you need broad buy in to steer LLMs. Again, historically this has never been the case. Revolutions are typically won by a minority, most of the population in any conflict usually remains unaligned and simply wants to stay out of harms way. Most people do not want to steer anything, they just want to survive and be left alone. Government is not a luxury - it is insurance against being murdered in your own bed. Most people intuitively understand this, even if they do not understand or appreciate the genesis of their own particular states.
But I agree, it is a good question, and I am not convinced we will achieve that "love letter" state. That is simply one of the few positive outcomes I envision. But I personally find it more likely humans will destroy each other before such a state could be meaningfully achieved at scale. I am just trying to be more optimistic.
Of course, I applaud the humans doing the hard work to ensure no human has to ever labor again. Apologies if I was unclear on that perspective. I suggest a second look at my reply will however convey this to you.
The truth is that many people enjoy working. It's satisfying and fulfilling to build something useful or to make a discovery that contributes to human knowledge. We can acknowledge that and then consider the entirely separate question of the ideal level of resource redistibution.
But you then go even beyond the already answered market efficiency/plausibility objection that comes up ad nauseam when Bullshit Jobs is mentioned to make a positive assertion that:
> The truth is that many people enjoy working
On what basis? What is "many"? Do you think a majority of the workforce would elect to keep working if they could maintain their current standard of living without any work? Do you think this would maintain independent of any standard of living? Do you think people would no longer find fulfillment in performing some work (whatever they choose) if it was not economically required of them to perform some labor? I mean presumably the people who do not want to sit around and do nothing will act accordingly. Let them do whatever they want. Why does it follow from that to say that most people "enjoy" having to exchange their labor to earn a paycheck?
It seems to me you are making a rather remarkable claim, with little attempt at substantiation. Maybe you could answer some of my questions to flesh out your point a little more?
I agree people will still want to do things when society has fully automated away paychecks. That is why I look forward to the elimination of exchanging labor for monetary reward. Let people freely pursue those passions you outline, a paycheck adds nothing in a world where automation provides such people with not only survival, but ample surplus and innovation.
The idea of "eliminating labor for monetary reward" is quite utopian. I like the sound of the idea too, but I don't think it's based on a realistic understanding of history, economics, or human psychology.